Lucinda Roy was chair of the English dept at Virginia Tech before
Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people before committing suicide. Roy pulled
Cho from his creative writing class, because his writings and behavior
were frightening students. Roy worked with Cho the 2005 Fall
semester at which time she recommended he get counseling. Cho
clearly was mentally unstable, and Roy did more than recommend he get
counselling. She contacted various University agencies, all which
failed to help Cho.

Yet, Roy does not have a specific agenda. She writes with skill and
eloquence about all sides of the story: Cho, his family, the
University's administration, other teachers, herself, etc. It's an
incredibly moving and impressive book. Her goal is to explain and
provoke questions, and she does that extremely well.

Clearly written, deeply thoughtful, and few conclusions make this book
exceptional.

[k117] Then there are the counselors, therapists, police officers, and
psychologists who know as well as anyone that there are too many
troubled young people being funneled through a mental health system
that purports to treat them but that does not have the capacity to do
so. They understand that something wild is growing in our midst,
something untamed and eager, some brooding energy we are afraid to
acknowledge.

[k171] Causality is supposed to make the plot credible in a tragedy
like this one. We are schooled to believe that an act of spontaneous
evil is as unlikely as spontaneous combustion; we are trained to
search for signs. The arc of the narrative becomes the slippery
relationship between time and failure.

[k180] And the lucky ones who weren't in that location said, "How
could this ugliness have happened over there, to them?" But in their
hearts even the lucky people knew that this unfortunate question
belonged to them as well. Because what happened over there could
happen anywhere. Because "we" are always "they" in the end.

[k341] Early that afternoon I had received a call from an editor at
the New York Times. Would I write an op-ed about how the tragedy had
affected the community? It would appear in the next morning's paper. I
agreed to do it. Over the years, I have trained myself to write my way
through suffering--not to escape it, but instead to attempt to
decipher my experience. I hadn't begun to understand the implications
of the war in Sierra Leone until I had written a novel about it.

[k749] It's not simply that Seung seems to be so depressed; it is his
anger that troubles me, particularly when I am never sure how he will
react to my suggestions that he seek counseling. I am aware of the
fact that, in some cultures, admitting you need to see a counselor can
be viewed as weakness and can therefore be offensive, especially to
young men. But I keep suggesting this option because I am convinced
that he needs help.

[k763] One of the techniques I use to help students who have
difficulty with writing is to cowrite work with them. Seung and I are
writing a poem together, but it is a difficult process. I hope it will
help me understand him better. The poem's title is "Seung," a title he
chose, I believe--certainly one he agreed to. I ask him to describe
himself. After many long pauses and follow-up questions, he calls
himself a "secret." In response to my question about what makes him
who he is, he tells me he is covered, silent, waiting. I ask him what
he is waiting for. He shrugs. "I don't know," he says. He tells me
he's so focused that it hurts him. It is a spontaneous offering--a
sentence unexpectedly given. I write it down, make it a line in the
poem.

[k975] I understand that it can be incredibly challenging to work in
an understaffed facility, but the information that had been provided
to the CCC should have alerted counselors to the seriousness of the
situation. The Panel Report revealed that Cho had been repeatedly
flagged--by female students he harassed, by his roommate who was
worried about his state of mind, and by faculty in English who had
taught him. But he still fell through the cracks.

[k986] On December 13, 2005, Cho's roommate (called a "suitemate" in
the Panel Report because students in Harper Residence Hall shared a
common sitting area) had reported that he had received an instant
message from Cho threatening, "I might as well kill myself now." The
roommate called the VTPD and Cho was taken to the police department
and evaluated by someone from New River Valley Community Services
(NRVCS). The prescreener concluded that Cho was "an imminent danger to
self or others," an evaluation that was critical because it meant that
a magistrate could issue a temporary detention order. Cho spent the
night at Carilion St. Albans Psychiatric Hospital, known locally as
"St. Albans."

[k997] The staff psychiatrist concluded in his evaluation summary at
noon, "[T]here is no indication of psychosis, delusions, suicidal or
homicidal ideation." Cho was released on the understanding that he
would receive follow-up care from the CCC. Unfortunately, what the
staff psychiatrist at Carilion St. Albans failed to take into account
was an obstacle that I had encountered when I tried to get Seung-Hui
Cho into counseling: The CCC did not see students unless they sought
counseling voluntarily.

[k1015] During Cho's junior year at Virginia Tech, numerous incidents
occurred that were clear warnings of mental instability. Although
various individuals and departments within the university knew about
each of these incidents, the university did not intervene
effectively. No one knew all the information and no one connected all
the dots.

[k1049] From Tuesday, April 17, when the identity of the shooter was
confirmed up until the time of writing this book, there has been no
meaningful internal investigation with regards to specific incidents
related to Seung-Hui Cho. As far as I can tell, apart from the
development of some guidelines about how to evaluate and refer
troubled students, Cho's history at Virginia Tech has been erased from
the upper administration's collective memory. After tragedies like
this, people clam up. They are warned that it is too dangerous to talk
about the specifics of a case when lawyers are chomping at the bit,
when the media is lying in wait like a lynch mob. But people also
remain silent when they are worried that what they have to say could
injure them somehow. In the days and weeks that followed the tragedy
at Virginia Tech I was reminded of how much silence has to say to us
if we listen with care.

[k1071] But silence is an impediment to understanding.

[k1079] In the next few months, until Governor Kaine issued Executive
Order 53 on June 18, 2007, which allowed the review panel to look at
Cho's academic and mental health records, the Tech administration
would be obsessed with the right to privacy of a single
individual. And that single individual whose rights the Tech
administration would be so concerned about protecting was none other
than Seung-Hui Cho.

I agree with her perspective that we should write actively. The
"I" in content is not egostistical, rather I am more accountable if I
write in the active voice.

[k1607] When the passive voice is used in sentence construction it is
hard to pin down who the subject is. [...] The phrase "The Policy
Group was informed," for example, begs the question of who did the
informing. It seems by the end of the paragraph as though everyone is
receiving all the information at the same time, but given how chaotic
the situation must have been, this seems somewhat unlikely. Usually
teachers of writing try to dissuade students from using the passive
voice construction because it tends to result in accounts that lack
specificity and removes a subject from his or her own actions, as it
does in this case.

[k1624] For instance, what information do we release without causing a
panic? We learned from the Morva incident last August that speculation
and misinformation spread by individuals who do not have the facts
cause panic.

When I panic I focus on the little things, that is, rearranging
the deck chairs on the Titanic when the boat is sinking. One of the
things we work on at bivio is replacing the word "think" with
"do". This is very difficult to accomplish in practice. We so much want
to know our answer is perfect that we think too much. In real life
answers are not perfect, because the information at hand is limited,
and our extrapolations are almost certainly wrong. Decisions are made,
especially during crises, out of fear, and usually the wrong fears.

[k1639] At that time of the morning, when thousands are in transit,
what is the most effective and efficient way to convey the information
to all faculty, staff, and students? If we decided to close the campus
at that point, what would be the most effective process given the
openness of a campus the size of Virginia Tech? How much time do we
have until the next class change?

The following is disturbing on many levels, but the non-obvious
feeling I had is about the use of "public". If the records were the
public's to disclose, no settlement would be needed. The fact is that
the administration, not the public, is the defendant. We often pretend
that administrations are the body they administer, which is just
false, and a dangerous assumption for the body being administered
(ruled) to make.

[k1696] Although more material has been recently released in
accordance with the settlement between the victims' families and the
public, and it's possible that other documents will be released in the
future, it would seem that those lobbying for full disclosure still
have a long battle ahead of them.

[k1701] When times get tough, I recite Audre Lorde's words: "When I
dare to be powerful--to use my strength in the service of my vision,
then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid." I like
the idea that fear diminishes when we focus on serving our visions; I
like to think that there is a type of empowerment we can cultivate
within ourselves that is nurturing rather than acquisitive or
destructive.

[k1772] There are organizations at Tech built around a common faith or
ethnicity, the love of a sport or a career, and organizations focused
on activities as varied as belly dancing, cigars, croquet, philosophy,
and spying. But if Cho allowed himself to have fun with other
students, to actually enjoy himself when he went out with them, to
truly be their peer, how would they recognize his power? In the fall
of 2005, when he grabbed a knife and stabbed it into the carpet as his
roommates watched in surprise, he was emphasizing the fact that he
would never be one of them.

[k1938] HIGHER EDUCATION in the United States has changed over the
past decade, and these changes have been felt most acutely at public
institutions that rely on a steady infusion of state funds and at
smaller private institutions that cannot draw upon hefty endowments to
shore up their budgets. Nowadays, some of those in leadership
positions at universities have little experience working with students
and almost no experience in the classroom. It has become more
important to hire administrators who know how to raise money than it
is to hire those who know much about students.

[k2286] Moreover, in the process of trying to collect data from
faculty in the English department who had taught Cho, the
administration inadvertently attached one individual's private
response to a survey seeking the location of university
computers. When the administration was informed of this gaffe, it
expressed surprise, not having known it had done so. The violation of
privacy did little to reassure some of us that our hard drives would
be secure. At a time when Seung-Hui Cho's privacy was being zealously
guarded by the administration, the privacy of faculty and staff seemed
to have no value.

[k2299] Ron Forehand made it clear that the punishment for
non-compliance would be extreme: Employees who refuse access to
Virginia Tech-owned electronic equipment for this data preservation
project may be subject to a range of sanctions, to include discipline
(including discharge) and denial of a defense by the Attorney
General's office in the event litigation is filed as a result of April
16th. In the even [sic] an employee is not cooperative, I suggest that
the university simply confiscate the equipment, take appropriate
action in respect to copying, and then take appropriate personnel
action against the resistant employee. I'd be happy to speak
personally to any employee should that be necessary. Please know that
you, the legal department, and the university have the full support of
the Office of the Attorney General in your endeavors.

[k2309] Faculty in the English department who did not comply could
lose everything--jobs, health care coverage (which is tied to
employment), and legal representation, even though the university had
not yet determined how it would safeguard the information it was
seizing.

[k2326] IN THE section entitled "University Setting and Campus
Security," the Panel Report concluded: Although the 2004 General
Assembly directed the Virginia State Crime Commission to study campus
safety at Virginia's institutions of higher education (HJR 122), the
report issued December 31, 2005, did not reflect the need for urgent
corrective actions. So far as the panel is aware, there was no outcry
from parents, students, or faculty for improving VT campus security
prior to April 16. Most people liked the relaxed and open atmosphere
at Virginia Tech. Yet in 2005 several faculty members, including
myself, had alerted various units to issues of campus security,
vandalism, and troubled students. We had spoken with a number of
people about our concerns, including representatives from the College
of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, Student Affairs, the VTPD,
Judicial Affairs, the Women's Center, and the Cook Counseling Center.

[k2481] THE PAST few years have taught me that, in many ways, I am a
traditional, somewhat conservative teacher, even though my political
leanings are liberal or independent. There are many books I do not
include on my syllabus because I still believe--unfashionable though
it has become to do so--that great literature is more than an
obsession with a stark realism and raw verisimilitude, that the
greatest work teaches us how to live with dignity, courage, and
compassion. Experience has taught me that words are more powerful than
we give them credit for, and that we have no way of knowing how
sophisticated students may or may not be when they enter our
classrooms. I therefore do not assume that all students are ready to
devour all texts at the same time.

It would be easy to assert that Student A had no right to submit such
disturbing material to his teachers, but, if we adhere to the spirit
of the Constitution, he had every right, and still does, to say
whatever he wants. What I would assert, however, is this: His teachers
had every right to be appalled by what Student A had written and to
react accordingly. [...]

Student A's teachers were absolutely right to confront him about his
work and to demand that he not submit such disturbing material to
class. As chair of the department at the time, I had every right to
demand that he comply with those requests. At some point, people have
to say no. That is what the English department did. That is what the
officer who offered to help me also did. That is what Tom Brown--then
serving as director of student life and advocacy--did when he met with
the student himself. But the university lacked the mechanisms needed
to react more appropriately to what became an urgent and distressing
situation.

[k2539] But there are risks involved if we assume that thousands of
students are potentially lethal. Administrators who are justifiably
concerned about school safety could intercede aggressively, setting up
punitive systems designed to detect any and all potential threats,
however unlikely they may be, not realizing that some of the things we
cherish most--young people's energy and imagination, for
example--could be jeopardized in the process.

[k2601] One of the obvious drawbacks to the zero tolerance policies is
the fact that students who are suspended or expelled have to go
somewhere--they don't simply disappear. Who is supposed to educate
them at that point? Do zero tolerance policies result in the
transference of the student from one school system to another? If
other schools are not open to them, are these students meant to simply
roam the streets? If so, is this policy likely to make the community
safer?

[k2670] The assumption that it is easy to identify potential threats
is faulty; almost all the students who write about homicide have
absolutely no intention of killing anyone. It should be acknowledged,
however, that threat assessment teams will make mistakes.

[k2689] It's a shame that those whose focus is teaching and who are, I
would propose, "the nurturers of new intelligence," are sometimes not
considered to be as valuable to the research-based institution.

This is a new twist on those who can't do, teach. We have
tremendous disrespect for teaching, and in the US, we hate bureaucracy
even more. In CH, for example, people accept the need for teachers,
buereaucrats, stone masons, and so on. Stratification in society
occurs along different lines in CH (language, money, origin, ...).

[k2694] IT HAS always been difficult for administrators who are not
regularly in the classroom to understand the challenges teachers
face.

[k2765] Today in the United States, hordes of boys and girls are
funneled through an unresponsive system that barely acknowledges their
existence. They emerge at the other end often unable to read or write,
or reading and writing at such a basic level that it can be hard for
them to function. Their parents are often chronically absent from
their lives, or so consumed by poverty that it can be hard to get from
day to day. There has been a massive exodus of good teachers from
teaching. This is a catastrophe that threatens to redefine the social
landscape of the United States. In poor rural and tough urban
districts there is a paucity of good teachers; those who try to remain
are often treated like dirt and paid salaries that do not permit them
to support their families. We acknowledge that this is happening,
shake our heads, and move on, hoping that these wild young people will
not encroach upon our neighborhoods. We are more likely to assume that
a young person killed or injured in an environment like this one is
less innocent than someone on a middle-class campus. The tragedy isn't
considered to be as great when those who are lost have already been
discarded.

[k2777] There are times when students yearn for boundaries. Seung-Hui
Cho may have been willing to study with me because he knew what to
expect, and he knew the parameters. For someone who had great
difficulty controlling his emotions, and who eventually was subsumed
by them, an environment of predictability and order may have been a
welcome one.

[k2789] If some of our schools resemble detention centers, it is not
surprising that students graduate without a clue about how to conduct
themselves.

[k2823] There is a belief that those things that have not been
addressed in the home environment will be addressed by teachers who
function in loco parentis.

[k2626] Parents are either afraid to admit that they need help or
unable to get the help they say they need for children who are
spinning out of control.

[k2844] The "dumbing down" of the curriculum and grade inflation are
realities in education, and, although there is a reluctance to admit
it, student evaluations of teachers are partly to blame. I am not
speaking as someone who is bitter about her own student evaluations;
in fact, they have been a source of encouragement to me over the
years.

[k3058] It is a life especially attractive to young men who yearn for
freedom from responsibility. The only obligation is to one's art, and
one's art is an expression of oneself, which makes writing a process
akin to looking in the mirror commenting on your own reflection, warts
and all.

[k3062] This does not mean that these students are deeply
disturbed. In fact, only in very rare cases is that true. A
significant number of students I have taught whose work is the most
accomplished and resonant have suffered from a range of emotional
problems, in part because of their acute sensitivity. We must not turn
students like these away from writing. In fact, for their sake and for
art's sake, we have an obligation to do the opposite. But we cannot
automatically make the assumption that all students are equally
prepared to make the same journeys at the same time.

This is unwise. We are all students. It's when we think we know
it all, and are done being "formed" that real dangerous thought
begins.

[k3084] In addition, the word student carries with it certain
assumptions. Students are in the process of becoming adults. Even if
they are adults, the word student admits that they are not yet fully
formed.

[k3192] There is an ancient Indian saying that I try to live by:
"Everything not given is lost." In other words, if we don't learn to
give things away, if we don't learn to share who we are, then there is
nothing but sadness and loss. So these words are my small gift to
you.

[k3206] I sent him some poems and his lawyer told me he would deliver
them and the letter to the young man. Later on I learned that he had
opted to live and had accepted the plea bargain in the end. The lawyer
wrote to me some time after that and told me that one of the young
man's poems had been accepted for publication. I don't fool myself
into believing that it was a letter from me that made the difference,
especially as there was so much I was incapable of knowing about
him. If anyone did make a difference it was his extraordinary and
dedicated lawyer, who refused to give up on someone he believed had
potential.

[k3214] The writing process has become for me a process akin to
grieving because it is the stubbornness of it that bludgeons you, the
need to keep returning to the same travesty. What people like to call
"the healing process" doesn't live up to its billing. Instead, it is
an entry into different configurations of pain, a series of
accommodations and reconciliations. I take the hard, knotty tumor of
the word grief and chisel away at it until it attains its own stark
beauty.

[k3371] After the Virginia Tech tragedy, cautious state politicians
didn't want to mention the word gun. For this reason, they paid a lot
of lip service to mental health reform and campus security--issues
that suddenly caused them sleepless nights.

Cho did not buy weapons at a gun show. It is interesting that we
can buy guns online like Cho did and other mass killers but we cannot
buy alcohol online.

[k3378] Many people, including many moderate gun owners, agree that
gun show purchases should come under the same jurisdiction as
purchases made at other venues, but gun rights advocates mounted a
fierce campaign.

[k3399] When it comes to buying ammo, there is a plethora of
family-oriented outlets from which to choose. IF ALL of the attacks on
schools we have suffered since the 1990s had been perpetrated by
terrorists from other countries we would be in a much better state of
preparedness. We would recognize at once that something needs to be
done to address the issue, for school shootings are a form of domestic
terrorism. But because the perpetrators are homegrown, there is a
tendency to think of them in the same way as we think of "domestic
violence," to perceive them as being less threatening.

[k3405] Mass killings are less than a quarter of 1 percent of
U.S. homicides, which run at around 11,920 deaths per year, or 10.08
deaths for every 100,000 people. Although this is far higher than the
homicide rate in France (4.93 deaths per 100,000) or England and Wales
(0.31 deaths per 100,000) or even Switzerland (6.4 deaths per
100,000), it could be worse. The United States makes over $

[k3437] In the October 16, 2006, issue of the Chicago Sun-Times, Bill
Dedman described what happened in Alaska when Evan Ramsey decided to
punish fellow students and his principal: In their own words, the boys
who have killed in America's schools offer a simple suggestion to
prevent it from happening again: Listen to us. "I told everyone what I
was going to do," said Evan Ramsey, 16, who killed his principal and a
student in remote Bethel, Alaska, in 1997. He told so many students
about his hit list that his friends crowded the library balcony to
watch. One boy brought a camera. "You're not supposed to be up here,"
one girl told another. "You're on the list."

[k3448] These student-shooters are not in hiding; they are out in the
open.

As a parent, I think it is my job to introduce kids to the world
of violence slowly. The problem is that it is everywhere. I don't
let my kids read the paper, because it is riddled with violent imagery
of actual acts in a very sterilized way. No TV plays in our house
except recently to allow a video game console without first person
shooter games. Yet even the free games with that came with the console
are cartoon violence. It may seem better for my sons to hit each other
as proxy Lego characters instead of real life but I have my
doubts. The acts of violence in video games are not painful nor are
the acts of pulling the trigger on a 9mm Glock in real life. Pain is
the body's feedback mechanism. When animals fight they both get hurt
so there is a natural slowing to the action. With violence with weapons
it removes this natural brake on the action. Modern violence needs
mental controls that children don't have.

[k3455] But how would two teens know that the rules had changed? After
all, adults manufacture terror all the time and feed it to the young
for entertainment. Why shouldn't the young manufacture it for
themselves and feed it to us for a laugh?

[k3472] Like a typical contemporary antihero, Seung-Hui Cho didn't
need wisdom for a successful attack, or courage, or even a lot of
money; what he needed was stealth, a constancy of purpose, a lot of
ammo, and two reliable weapons. Two guns made him, in a sense, two
men--all the more likely that he could outstrip the tally achieved by
Harris and Klebold.

[k3477] To those who saw him in Norris Hall, he didn't seem filled
with despair or rage. In fact, it was his calmness that was most
horrifying, his ability to distance himself from the act of
killing.

[k3521] In How the Mind Works, Pinker writes about the rampage
phenomenon as it manifests itself in ancient cultures: "Amok is a
Malay word for the homicidal sprees occasionally undertaken by lonely
Indochinese men who have suffered a loss of love, a loss of memory, or
a loss of face."

[k3549] Cho could have made an accurate diagnosis. If we assume for a
moment that the "amok man" exists, however, and that an idea can be
the catalyst for a rampage, this would suggest that rampages can be
counteracted by ideas, too.

[k3577] Why are girls willing to break the code of silence and alert
people to a potential attack? In part, Newman and her coauthors
conclude, it is due to the strength of their social ties; Amylee
Bowman felt close to a teacher she was afraid would be targeted. It is
encouraging to know that there are young women who will go up against
a group as strong as New Bedford's Trench Coat Mafia, a group that
espoused Nazi ideology.

[k3592] Grossman's central claim is that certain kinds of programming
and brainwashing techniques are remarkably successful in creating a
more lethal soldier, and that similar techniques have been imported
into American and Western popular cultures. Grossman charts the recent
dramatic increase in aggravated assault in the United States, the
United Kingdom, New Zealand, Scandinavia, and other European
countries. He draws upon his own military experience as well as his
multiyear investigation of conditioning and desensitization. Although
he believes that, from a military point of view, this kind of
programming can be important when war is waged, he sees its
indiscriminate application on the young, in first-person-shooter video
games in particular, as extremely dangerous--so dangerous, in fact,
that he thinks it threatens the fabric of society. School shootings to
Grossman are a manifestation of the altered psychology of conditioned
youth. In spite of the controversy surrounding Grossman's conclusions,
claiming that all these attacks on schools and universities are
aberrations ignores an obvious trend.

[k3623] It is time to remove the guns from Seung-Hui Cho's cold, dead
hands for good.

[k3838] Grief is greedy. Its dominant theme--the primacy of memorial--
cannot countenance forgetfulness. That is why, if life is to progress
into the future tense, grief has to be coaxed to a place of
reconciliation.

This is why I find most hip-hop and rap disturbing. African
Americans are providing fuel for racism against African Americans.

[k4002] Without caricature, it is impossible to effectively promulgate
racism.

[k4176] The lack of supervision is a distinct advantage for students
who make friends relatively easy and are proactive about their
education; they revel in their newfound freedom. But for others, a
large campus environment can be a recipe for disaster.

There has always been a gap between kids and adults. Socrates
talked negatively about the youth of his day. This trivializes the
problem of inter-generational communication. I don't find talking with
my children easy, but I know I bear more than 50% of the
responsibility for miscommunications. I am the adult, and they are the
kids. I brought them into this world. It's my responsibility to make
sure they can cope in it. For some reason we assume this should be
easy, but every generation has their Jack the Rippers. We need to
make sure they get help before they hurt anybody (physically or
psychologically).

[k4189] Many of our kids, for good or ill, have been leased to special
interest groups--the cell phone companies, the malls, the video game
industry.

[k4257] In spite of all the demands of parenting, there is one sure
method of discovering a young person's voice, and that involves
finding ways to learn and laugh together. This one parenting skill
supersedes all others. It is what my mother did for me. Her contagious
sense of humor and her insatiable intellectual curiosity allowed me to
thrive.

[k4367] I have friends who believe that Cho was a monster, and friends
who believe that he was simply a very sick young man in need of help,
a victim of his own illness. My conclusions are less cut-and-dried. I
believe he was easily hurt,

[k4371] There are more Chos, more Klebolds and Harrises, more Kinkels,
and more Woodhams in our schools than people like to believe, just as
there are in society as a whole. Schools don'

[k4392] The Virginia legislature failed to close the gun show loophole
when two Democratic senators voted in favor of retaining it. Anyone
eighteen years or older can purchase a gun at any gun show in Virginia
without undergoing a background check. "Just say no to guns," we tell
Virginia's children. "Please don't forget to leave your weapons in the
parking lot when you drive to school during hunting season."

[k4416] We routinely underestimate the potency of technology, its
ability to reshape attitudes and behavior. Our statistical data often
reflect our provincialism. Attacks are rarely connected in meaningful
ways, even though television, movies, and the Internet have enabled a
kind of ideological miscegenation (for want of a better term) that has
changed the cultural dynamic forever and is redefining national
identity. Viruses go global swiftly. A young man in Finland can watch
the videos posted by a young man in Virginia; a young man in Virginia
can be inspired by two boys in Colorado.